Attendance is mandatory. (Let me know if, and why, you will miss a class.)

Late work will not be accepted without prior arrangement.

In addition to being fully present in class and handing in all the assignments, to really succeed in the class you should expect to spend several hours each week (outside of class) interacting with the textbook -- this means prior to and in addition to the several hours you will need to spend working on the homework assignments.

Students are encouraged to work together on the homework assignments (and to get help from me or the tutor). However, your final write-up of the solutions must represent your own understanding; copying another person's work is plagiarism and will result in no credit for that assignment (and possibly worse). If there is any question about a specific case, simply cite your sources as you would in any kind of research paper (e.g., "I worked with Joe Schmoe on this problem.").

Additional Resources:

Excel: We'll often be using Excel (or your preferred spreadsheet program) to organize, analyze, and graph data that we acquire in class.

Excel tutorial: Here is a nice online tutorial for using Excel in physics. If you've never used Excel before, you might want to look at this a little before classes start just to get a sense of things. And it's a nice reference to keep in mind for later in the course.

Histograms: Here is a nice explanation of how to make a histogram in Excel.

Data Studio: We'll often use a program called Data Studio in class to run various data-collection devices. (Chapter 1 of UP talks about these a bit.) Here is a link to a starter manual for that software, in case you ever want to look at it.

Topic 1

Week 0: 8/30 - 9/3

Intro Course: TBA

No class Friday (as Travis will be at a conference in Italy!)

For Monday: get the textbook, look at preface, TOC, chapter 1; also read the "Pendulum Lab Description" under Week 1 as that's what we'll be jumping into right away in class.

Email Travis or talk to Matt Ollis or Jim Mahoney if you have questions about the course

See you Monday!

Topic 2

Week 1: 9/6 - 9/10

Main Topic: Pendulum Experiment

For Monday: look at Chapter 1 of the text, but in class we'll jump right in to an experiment, so see the "pendulum lab description" pdf below.